Marguerite Read online

  ‘Laure, you’re disgusting,’ chided Brigitte, though she loved a good bowel joke as much as the next woman. ‘I’m surprised she hasn’t been chased away yet, to be perfectly honest.’

  ‘Well apparently not. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t last much longer. She doesn’t look like she’s cut out for the job.’

  ‘Don’t I know it.’ Brigitte wiped her hands on her apron and settled her bottom on the edge of a stool. Her ankles ached; she rolled them from side to side. ‘She needs a good meal and a stint on the farm. That would sort her out in no time at all.’

  ‘Perhaps I’ll throw in a few brioches with her next order – she could do with the extra butter.’

  ‘Do that, then send her my way. I’ll show her how we work over here. There’s no room for airs and graces when you’re having to clear out Vanille’s latest blockage.’

  Vanille, their eldest cow, had to be ‘rectally excavated’ – as Henri put it – on a regular basis.

  ‘Forget Vanille’s blockages – you’d frighten her away with your egg-whisking alone, Brigitte.’

  ‘You bet I would,’ Brigitte cried, brandishing the whisk as if to hit Laure with it. She felt a little egg run down her forearm, and wiped it on her stomach.

  ‘I heard she received a visit from our local mystic.’

  Brigitte looked up. ‘Not Lacourse?’

  ‘None other.’

  ‘I told you how that woman used to turn her eyes at Henri?’

  ‘I could never forget it,’ said Laure, who had been there at the time of that great scandal, some fifteen years ago. Nothing had actually happened, but Brigitte had never forgotten Suki’s repeated visits to the farm, the stubbed cigarette ends she found in a little pile outside the house, the swish of exotic colours and jangling of metal in her kitchen, and the woman’s wretched laugh, false as anything.

  ‘Well let’s hope she doesn’t get Jérôme’s nurse under her wing.’

  She poured cream and milk into the bowl.

  ‘Look at that cream,’ said Laure.

  ‘Mind you, his nurse won’t have time for new friendships. Jérôme’s getting worse and worse. He can’t move himself any more.’

  ‘And still no sign of his boys?’

  ‘None. They were in touch to give me the bare details of this replacement when the last nurse couldn’t hack it any more, and that’s the last I’ve heard from them. Not that I’m surprised. I did tell them a few months back now that he wasn’t doing too well and they’d be well advised to come and see him at some point, but they weren’t having any of it. They were rather rude, if I’m honest. Told me to get on with my job, and that I was the gardienne and not their therapist.’

  ‘I remember. Shockingly rude.’

  ‘I said to Jean-Christophe on the phone – you remember, the youngest – I said, “He is your father, you know,” and he told me it was none of my business and that, as I say, I wasn’t his therapist.’ She let the whisk rest for a moment and wiped her forehead. ‘And he’s a lawyer! All that education, and still so rude.’

  ‘Well, I’m not surprised really – I suppose he takes after Jérôme. They’ve always thought they’re too good for Saint-Sulpice.’

  ‘Oh, they were such wild boys, don’t you remember?’

  ‘How could I not!’ said Laure.

  ‘Still, it’s dreadfully sad. Their father at death’s door and they won’t even come and see him.’

  A rare silence fell between them. Brigitte stirred bacon into her mixture, and Laure leant over to inspect it. ‘Your pigs?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  They heard water gurgle in the bathroom upstairs; Brigitte rolled her eyes and sighed. She thought again about the nurse: she must go and check in on her and Jérôme. She’d reminded Brigitte of a doll she was given by her uncle as a young girl, which had broken too quickly. She’d been washing its hair and the head just came clean off, with a pop.

  * * *

  • • •

  This was surely a particularly beautiful evening. As he dried himself, he looked out at his land through the bathroom window. The view was so familiar that he seldom noticed it – no more than the small portrait of Brigitte’s mother hanging in the dark corner at the top of the stairs, or the cup above the sink that held their toothbrushes. But today he couldn’t help but see: everything was a dark gold, the sun falling but still far from gone, and he could see his herdsman Paul with Thierry, the latest farmhand, still working on the perennially crumbling walls of the olive groves. In this light, only at this point of the day, the silver of the olive leaves was a dark grey – just as only in the searing heat of summer could they appear quite white. The sky was clear and insects whirred and his lone goat let out a shout like a deep hiccup.

  He strode over to the window, tucking the towel neatly around his waist, and called out: ‘What are you two doing still at work?’

  Paul and Thierry looked up immediately, scanning the garden, the porch, trying to find the source of the shout. They were smiling in anticipation. He waved and leant out, feeling with some satisfaction the breadth of his shoulders fill the slim window frame. ‘Over here!’

  They frowned against the falling light, holding their hands up over their eyes.

  ‘We’re just too damn hard-working!’

  ‘We can’t get enough!’

  Henri laughed theatrically. ‘Oh, you can’t fool me!’ They laughed too and turned back to the wall with some awkwardness, as if uncertain whether the dialogue had ended. He turned too, and his hollow guffawing echoed in his ears, foolish. As he combed his hair in the mirror above the sink he sighed deeply, and his face looked very tired and dull to him then.

  * * *

  • • •

  ‘I thought perhaps we could go out today.’

  Jérôme turned to look at her, saying nothing.

  ‘It’s getting warm,’ she said. ‘I thought it might do you good to go outside.’

  He continued to stare, wearily. Then he turned in bed to face the wall. Marguerite waited for a while, but he remained silent.

  ‘Would you like to?’

  ‘I haven’t been outside for over a month.’

  ‘Yes, for at least five weeks,’ she said. ‘Since before I arrived.’

  ‘You probably expect I don’t keep time, just lying here day in day out.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But I do keep time. I know how long you’ve been here, I know what day it is. I’m not a prisoner.’ He forced out a little laugh. ‘I’m not Dantès, raging around his cell with whole years passing by.’

  ‘Of course you’re not.’

  ‘I employ you. You’re not here out of charity.’

  ‘Sir—’

  ‘So don’t you think if I wanted to go outside I would have told you to take me out? Or do I strike you as too meek to ask for what I want?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Perhaps you think I feel like an inconvenience to you.’

  Marguerite took a deep breath, waited.

  ‘I suppose you think you’re on some mission to rescue a feeble old man from terrible suffering and loneliness.’ He turned then in bed, excited. He raised himself up on one elbow. ‘I suppose you’re living in your own little fairy tale. Our own little Parisian Mother Teresa comes to the countryside to care for a very sad old man who will be eternally grateful.’ A fleck of spit had collected at the corner of his mouth. ‘Perhaps they’ll strike up a wonderfully redemptive friendship and she’ll forget all about the shameful life she’s running away from and all the people who have rejected her from the day she was born until the day she scurried along to this poor old house. And then the sad little old man will die smiling in her arms, tears twinkling in his eyes.’ He licked his lips and stared. ‘Isn’t that right?’

  ‘No.’ Marguerite started to tidy the few belongings on the table. She could feel the whump of her heartbeat; her hands were shaking. ‘I was just wondering if you wanted to go outside. I am just doing my job.’ She slammed one of the many jars of vitamins down a little too hard. ‘I know from your last nurse’s handover notes – which, by the way, were entirely perfunctory – that it does you good to get out, and that Doctor Meyer recommends it.’

  ‘Oh, perfunctory!’ he cried. ‘What terribly impressive vocabulary you have, Mother Teresa. Bravo. It must have been that sparkling education you got yourself at nursing school.’ She closed her eyes, and he turned back to face the wall. In a low, exhausted voice, he said: ‘Now get out please.’

  She whispered the words ‘fuck you’ as she left the room. She walked straight through the kitchen and out into the garden. Now she spoke aloud. ‘Fuck you.’ She inhaled deeply, stretched her arms above her head, felt her abdomen pulled from pelvis to ribs. ‘Fuck off and die already,’ she said, and was surprised to be overcome suddenly with laughter. She bent over to enjoy the sensation, resting her hands on her knees. She felt her hair falling around her face as she laughed. Then she straightened up and rubbed away tears from her eyes.

  * * *

  • • •

  ‘I wonder what you’ll think, Henri, when you see him. He’s gone rapidly downhill.’ Brigitte shook her head as she spoke. ‘It’s very sad.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking I’d go into the house.’

  ‘Weren’t you? No, I suppose not.’

  ‘I haven’t been in for some time.’

  ‘No, not since – well, I don’t know when. Didn’t you have to fix his bed that time a few months ago?’

  ‘No, we sent Thierry to do it.’

  ‘That’s right.’ They had almost reache
d the village; Brigitte leant forward in her seat to inspect everything. ‘That roundabout is getting grubbier by the day.’

  ‘Hm,’ said Henri.

  ‘It’s really a disgrace, actually. I know the weather’s only just warming up, but there’s no excuse not to have something planted there. Remember when I planted those hydrangeas in the middle?’

  ‘Yes, I think so.’

  ‘Well, those lasted a while at least. But I can’t be expected to come to the rescue every time something in the village needs fixing . . . Huh, what a surprise – I can see Fred in the Tabac, already on his second beer of the day, no doubt.’ She sniffed, was silent for a moment. ‘Laure was saying this new nurse was seen talking to Suki Lacourse,’ she said as they passed the Lacourses’ house, and she eyed Henri carefully.

  ‘Is that right?’ He checked the rear-view mirror, indicated to turn right out of the village.

  ‘Well, apparently so. I wonder what someone like that thinks she’s doing chatting up some young little nurse.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Look at the state of that tarmac,’ she said, peering out at the battered road leading to Rossignol. ‘Well, it seems odd to me. Since she thinks she’s such an intellectual.’

  ‘Perhaps the nurse is an intellectual too,’ he joked lightly; Brigitte snorted.

  ‘I should think not! She hardly seemed capable of stringing two sentences together.’

  ‘Oh dear. Not great company for Jérôme.’

  Brigitte was silent for a moment. ‘Mind you, you don’t have to be an intellectual to be intelligent.’

  ‘No,’ said Henri, and he laid his hand over hers. ‘Of course you don’t.’

  * * *

  • • •

  Henri pulled the truck into Jérôme’s driveway. Rossignol was tired: the once-proud arch stretching high above the gates was covered in rust, the grey paint it used to wear peeling in small patches like sunburnt skin.

  ‘Wait here for a moment,’ said Brigitte. ‘I’ll just check they’re both around and awake. If I don’t come out in a few minutes, you can presume they are, of course. And pick me up on your way home?’

  Henri turned in the driveway and stopped by the tall cypress tree in its centre. It had always been there, as far as he knew. As a boy and young man he had come here often to play with Jérôme’s sons: Marc, Thibault, little Jean-Christophe with his ears like large mushrooms. Henri and his friends would race here from the village on bikes, small stones and flint spraying under their wheels.

  He remembered going on expeditions with Thibault, his classmate; they would tie bandanas around their foreheads and take large, pronged skewers into the wild forest around the Lanviers’ land. ‘We’re hunting boar!’ they’d shout to Thibault’s brothers, refusing to take Jean-Christophe with them despite his pleading. ‘You’re not big enough yet JC. They might kill you.’

  Rossignol had been larger, and grander, and more remote than anyone else’s house. When they were teenagers, the surrounding forest was a good place to smoke cigarettes and weed, and get drunk. There was a pool in the garden, long since out of use, into which they’d jump from what felt like lethal distances, hurling themselves in at their most acrobatic angles and dunking each other a little too long.

  Yet always hanging over this idyll was the shadow of Jérôme. His sons were terrified of him, even the impossibly grown-up-seeming Marc, whom the whole village seemed to worship. Henri remembered Jérôme coming out to the pool sometimes, in his Speedos, and all the boys falling silent.

  ‘A race?’ he’d challenge them. ‘Who’s man enough for that?’

  He’d smile, look around, accept his reluctant contestants. Though not tall, he seemed to the young boys preternaturally strong and fit. And he was, indeed, a faster swimmer – by a breath – than Henri, who was the fastest of them all.

  He liked Henri; Henri sensed he approved of him. And so Henri, feeling a little disloyal, liked him back.

  ‘My father’s a fucking cunt,’ Thibault said once, kicking a wall, fists curled tight by his side and tears in his eyes. Henri felt he could neither agree nor disagree, and said something non-committal; perhaps ‘all parents are’. But Thibault had insisted: ‘No, you have no idea. My dad’s a proper cunt.’ Then he’d stared accusingly at Henri. ‘You don’t think so because he likes you. You’re exactly what he wishes I was.’ And Henri had had to lie.

  Brigitte hadn’t come out. Henri turned on the engine and made to drive the truck back out onto the road, but he stopped at the sight of a figure standing by the gateway, squinting at him. It was the new nurse, he realised, though he had thought her a teenage boy at first glance. She was younger than he’d imagined, standing long-limbed and straight in plain, even scruffy clothes, her eyes narrowed as she stared at him in the bright sunshine.

  He started to wind down the window to introduce himself, but she was already walking swiftly towards the house, keeping a distance from his truck. As she turned the corner of the house to get to the back door, she was the eerie vision of a teenage Thibault.

  3

  She stood for some time inspecting all the pastries behind the glass. There were glossy chocolate and coffee éclairs, vile-coloured marzipan pigs and frogs that she and her sister used to long for as children. The millefeuilles were impressive, delicately layered and squidgy. There were dark jam tarts, criss-crossed with glistening strands of pastry. It all made her feel a little sick.

  She pointed at a pile of fougasses.

  ‘Are they plain?’ she asked the young woman at the till.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No, Julie,’ interjected the main boulangère, tutting as she looked up from her magazine. She had been reading it standing up, leaning forward onto the counter. Like a hen, thought Marguerite, with her small head, short cropped hair and unusually wide hips. And she blinked a lot, and stared, and jerked her little face just like a chicken. ‘That’s the garlic and rosemary.’

  She watched Marguerite as she paid. Marguerite could feel her small bright eyes on her back as she left, pulling up the hood of her cagoule against the rain.

  She thought vaguely of going to sit in the library, for something to do, and realised that she was startlingly bored. She couldn’t sit anywhere to eat because everything was wet, so she stood under the awning outside one of the closed shops. It appeared to sell pet accessories, exclusively: there were leopard-print dog and cat beds, pink and red and blue collars studded with shiny paw prints. She turned back to the road, the tarmac black with rain. The fougasse tasted good. Small crumbs of pastry scattered down her front.

  She felt, as always in this village, that she was being observed, though there was hardly anyone around in this weather. And then she heard a whistle. She looked towards it and saw Suki dressed all in black, standing in the doorway of the grand house on the corner, her shoulders a little hunched in the cold. She was beckoning to Marguerite, who could do nothing but cross the street and join her.

  ‘What are you doing out here?’ Suki said instead of greeting her. She pushed the door open. ‘Come in, come in.’

  Inside, the house was dark. Suki led her through a gloomy hallway to the salon, switching on table lamps and standing lights. There were strings of coloured bulbs across the old mantelpiece.

  ‘Sit down,’ she said, gesturing towards the sofa. ‘Will you have tea?’

  ‘I really can’t stay.’

  ‘Of course you can.’ She walked out of the room, and Marguerite heard her opening and closing cupboards. ‘Do you like Persian tea?’

  ‘Yes, I think so.’

  The salon was a mess. There were heavy, faded curtains in the same mushroom velvet as the sofa and armchairs. Magazines were piled in columns on either side of the fireplace; there were cardboard boxes around the place filled to bursting, with various words scrawled on them: HOME VIDEOS, PHOTOS MISC., JOURNALS. There were at least eight lamps in a bizarre array of styles: ornate silver antiques, brightly coloured ceramics, a plain beige sphere that could have cost five euros from Auchan. The bookshelves were crammed with cheap-looking paperbacks and chaotic rows of figurines.